GDPR & Marketing: How Does GDPR Impact Marketing?

If you caught our previous blog post on GDPR, you’ll have a good idea of what this new data protection regulation entails and why it is important. At first, it might all seem a little daunting but, for the majority of businesses, email marketing will be the area most affected.

Let’s take a look at the three key factors that will need to be considered from May 2018…

Data Permission

Going forward, businesses will be required to actively seek permission to use any personal data. Individuals need to express “freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous” consent reinforced by a “clear affirmative action”.

In practice…

Marketers will be required to clearly ask for permission before sending any promotional emails to customers. No assumptions or pre-ticked boxes allowed! Instead, you will need to offer users a dedicated form or optional checkbox that explicitly states that they are opting into your mailing list.

Data Access

The introduction of GDPR will offer users more control over how their data is collected and used. This includes the ability to access or remove their data, known as “the right to be forgotten”.

In practice…

Businesses will be responsible for making it easy as possible for users to access or remove their data. Offering a clear unsubscribe link in all marketing emails and, ideally, a link to a user profile where users can modify their preferences is the way to go. Giving your customers a range of email preference options will not ensure that you are GDPR compliant, but will allow you to focus your marketing efforts based on individual customer interests.

Data Focus

To comply with GDPR, businesses will be required to legally justify the processing of all data that they collect. This sounds intimidating but, put simply, this means avoiding collecting any unnecessary data.

In practice…

Focus only on the data you actually need to collect. If you’re not going to put it to direct use, don’t ask for it!